All About Jazz CD Reviews

Listening to Sean O'Bryan Smith is a little like listening to Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, and Wayman Tisdale--all at the same time. Maybe that's because Smith uses a variety of bass instruments,...

Teeming with energy and ideas, eager to learn and anxious to show how they've educated themselves, Planet Safety evinces a healthy respect for the jazz tradition. Significantly, that reverence incl...

For clarinetist Evan Christopher, Django a la Creole is the result of a forced journey from his home in New Orleans. In what might be seen as a positive aftermath of the Katrina disaster in 2005, C...

Connie Crothers is one of the most versatile pianists on a scene that is so often mislabeled free jazz. Her pianism has been cultivated through long years of study and deep listening, evident in ea...

Sometimes odd matches promise the most perfect couplings. Such is the case with the second release of the New York-based improvising ensemble, Shakers N' Bakers. They succeed beautifully with inspi...

For most people, bossa nova began in 1962, the year tenor saxophonist Stan Getz's album Jazz Samba (Verve, 1962) and 45rpm pull "Desafinado" stormed up the pop albums and singles charts. That fall,...

Pete M. Wyer's Stories from the City at Night bears uncanny reference to Kenneth Patchen and John Cage's 1942 radio play, The City Wears A Slouch Hat. Patchen, the "father of the beat poets," colla...

David "Fuze" Fiuczynski continues to obliterate the boundaries of modern-day electric guitar styles, pushing himself further forward into the "world" sounds, techniques, scales, and rhythms that no...

There's a lot of talent vying for our ears in jazz, which translates to many top rate artists falling into the underappreciated category. Guitarist Sangeeta Michael Berardi (b. Sept. 2, 1939, in Wa...

Such was the fallout from the blues boom of the 1960s that Sleepy John Estes and his compadre Hammie Nixon cut this album just prior to leaving for their first visit to Japan back in July of 1974. ...